[seriousquestion]

Social contagion can result in surprisingly self destructive behavior.

> For the first time that I am aware of, we are seeing clusters of people seeking voluntary amputations of healthy limbs and performing amputations on themselves.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-w...

That was in 2000 and since then it's only increased in scale. Tumblr alone saw widespread suicidal ideation, depression, self-harm and a host of identity crises.

Now the question is, what's the solution?

[FooBarBizBazz]

Amputation. Powerful memes. Where have I seen this combination before?

Addressing it head-on: Galatians 6:13.

Explicitly fighting it by redefinition (how pomo!): 1 Corinthians 3:18-19; Colossians 2:11.

Saying that it is beside the point: Galatians 5:6.

Dismissing the practice as exclusionary: Romans 3:1,28-31.

It shows up again and again.

Christianity deals with it thus: The old blood sacrifice is obsoleted by the new sacrifice -- the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, the Lamb of God.

Surely if we look in other faith traditions we will also find, in some of them, efforts to combat this sort of thing. It seems to crop up again and again with memes. They want to mark people.

[analognoise]

Turning off the internet and finding your tribe in person.

[nemo44x]

It makes me wonder if for many years parents knew what they were doing by keeping their kids away from “bad crowds”. It wasn’t just to keep them away from bad behaviors but also bad ideas. Certainly difficult to do today without alienating your kids.

I find it ironic that so much of what is “social” today was built by nerds who I assume had a difficult time socializing and everyone else that did not have a problem socializing for thousands of years are now using these weird social tools.

[jazzyjackson]

But what if all the potential members of my tribe are still plugged into… oh my god it’s the matrix, we have to go find the people we want on our side and flush them out of the machine! Perhaps by fooling the machine into flushing them out for us, ie get them banned from social media :o